Matt 'n Meg in Monterey

An exerpt from Cannery Row by John Steinbeck

"Cannery Row (below) in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone , a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers , and sons of bitches, " by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said, "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing."

Matt and I share a love for literature. We each spend a fair bit of time reading and talking about what we have read. Our discussions are thought-provoking and imaginative and often times lead to lots of giggles, or long strung out stories and scenarios.

This weekend we decided to take a trip to Monterey, California to see the old stomping grounds of one of my favorite authors, John Steinbeck. We jumped in the car and cruised down the beautiful California coastline feeling just like John and Charley (his black poodle) when they hit the road for the book Travels with Charley.

We didn't listen to the radio or CDs, but rather to each other and to the wind and to the ocean. I read Matt my favorite excerpts from Steinbeck books and he listened intently, occasionally asking me to repeat a sentence or phrase that struck his ear. When I tired of reading we drove in a pleasant quiet, broken when Matt pointed out an interesting tree or made up stories about us getting a farm along the coastline.

When we arrived in Monterey we headed straight to Cannery Row, an area of Monterey that was transformed from the stink and filth of fish cannery to become an upscale tourist destination. Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row features "Doc" a marine biologist based on Ed Ricketts, a Monterey Local who had a close friendship with Steinbeck. As I read passages about Doc and glanced over at Matt I was surprised at how similar Matt is to the character of Doc. "Doc would listen to any kind of nonsense and change it for you to a kind of wisdom. His mind had no horizon -- and his sympathy had no warp. He could talk to children, telling them very profound things so that they understood. He lived in a world of wonders. Everyone who knew him was indebted to him. And everyone who thought of him thought next, "I really must do something nice for Doc." In Cannery Row, Steinbeck wrote of Doc, "He wears a beard and his face is half Christ and half satyr and his face tells the truth." I told Matt that I thought that described him well also and he chuckled at the Jesus reference.